I don't know why you have such a hard time accepting that the game can be thoroughly played in a good eight to ten hours

I guess it's just because the above can easily take 3-4 hours by itself, and it's hardly half the game? Hey, I can't doubt you - you say you did it all of it in about an hour or so, I have to take your word for it, but personally I'm on my second time through - been playing for about 2 hours+ on and off, and I'm still far from done in Seattle.

I definately agree that it's not as large as DX1, but I found it to share much of the plot concepts, stories and feel of the first, and in some ways more interesting than the first. DX1 felt like the whole world had been taken over by a warehouse, whereas DX2 has pop singers and coffeeshops to deal with. I certainly regret the lack of a skill system, but I still found it necessary to think through scenarios like in DX1 (well, until the end when I'm basically an uber-cyborg ... but then again, that was true in DX1 as well).

Certainly, each to his own. I too would have preferred a more complicated DX sequel, but I just don't deny the heritage either.

Greasel - Yup, won all the fights. Perhaps through less traditional means.

Gansters & Ava - No idea. From the very start of this game, I did not give a damn about my character (Wait, who am I? Why would I care? Why would I actually feel any suspense right now? Why in the heck is that person supposedly my best friend? What connection do I have to this person?) I completed many quests for various NPCs, but I never really bothered with their names - I never got hooked in that way.

Omar - Actually, I joined 'em. Although a bit jacked up :o, I like their ending, too.

Lawyer - Played both sides, killed both sides.

Coffee - Played both sides to the bitter, caffinated end.

Apartments/offices - Yep. Thank gosh there are man-sized heating vents everywhere.

Templars - Both helped and hindered throughout the game; I was endlessly playing one side against the other.

Metro - All dead.

Sewer - More like a room than system, but it's now creature-free.

AI - Never did like 'er much; a bit too straight and narrow for me.

So on and so forth...

I don't know why you have such a hard time accepting that the game can be thoroughly played in a good eight to ten hours. It's not very complex, certainly dumbed down a number of items, and I certainly find it outright lacking Deus Ex's scope. If you managed to play out your game that long, that's great. Personally, I don't see how its size or scope can possibly compare to Deus Ex.

Yes, the "endings" were the same as the original. That is just one more thing that I would have hoped they would have expanded upon in the sequel. At least that one aspect stayed the same.

However, that is my issue with the game and, I tend to believe, the issue that a number of people had with the game. I expected something just as good - it had the advantage of time, feedback, and technology - and I hoped for something significantly better, but I still cannot help but find it quite shallow when compared to the original.

Decent game, but I do not think it is any type of Deus Ex sequel.

Noting that is just my opinion,
Ray

Edit: I just realized I said "one" instead of "won." /Smack self
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This comment was edited on Mar 3, 03:53.

So I can assume you've rigged the Greasel bets, killed the gangsters, saved Ava, dealt with the Omar, betrayed a lawyer, got involved in local coffee politics, broken into several apartments, snuck into several offices, wiped out the local Templars, freed the Metro terminal, cleaned out the sewer systems, and spied for the local pop singer AI? (and I know I'm leaving out some stuff).

And that's just the first city...it's not a matter of how many ammo clips you got, you don't get much stuff for over half the above. When I finished the first time I had enough biomods to re-engineer myself completely and more grenades than I knew what to do with.

Since you played DX so much, I assume you remember it was exactly the same way. I had one save game right at the end, then finished all the endings by going back to it.

That was the reason I made the comment about having all the extra supplies - I more than played through what there was of a game in Invisible War. The point about all the endings, "secret" ending included, is that they are all primarily tied into whatever happens in the last fifteen minutes of play.

For reference, Deus Ex is the non-multiplayer game that I have played the most. My final savegame had well over sixty hours of play in it.

Still wanting a sequel to Deus Ex :(,
Ray

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The "game reviews are corrupt" theory has a basic flaw. Not just game magazines, but game companies use advertisements to drive revenue. Ads aren't bribes, people, they're investments in the product. If EA were to up and pull their advertising dollars out of Gamespy, they'd both be hurt.

Not to mention the theory isn't consistent. Gamespy gave Planetside: CC 2 stars. You trying to tell me that SOE isn't a major advertiser for Gamespy? Get real.

Sure, you can beat this game in a day - there's almost no doubt about it.

But then you're undoubtably missing out on numerous subplots and sections. Like a comment I read elsewhere that proclaimed he beat all 3 endings in under 10 hours (there's 5 endings).

I think I spent well over 4 hours in Seattle alone, and my total play time the first time was probably around 30. Course I would spend half an hour just trying to figure out if there was a way to do stuff like, free the guy from the SSC jail.

As ever, I think expectations played a big part in that. Personally, I think most videos look rather crappy - they are low resolution, quite small, have poor picture quality (I watch DVDs on the computer while working; everything looks worse :D), etc. Basically, the game often looks quite a bit better and I normally discount the obvious flaws due to compensating for the video format.

However, I think that IW more or less showed exactly what the game would be like, sans framerate. Things did already look a bit worrisome (why was so much preview media at such resolution, those textures seem a little low in quality...), but I made the same assumption I detailed above. Surely, I though, the full retail game would be X many times better looking than the video.

Alas, the video really was a case of "What you see is what you get" and the final product actually ended up looking worse. An already poor-looking material just (more or less) got enlarged to fit my computer monitor.

Wanting to play UT2K4, SP:PT, and FC now! :o,
Ray

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Well, I beat the game with numerous credits/ammo/tools to spare and I think I hit eight hours tops...

Thinking that part would really depend on the gamer,
Ray

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The 'choices' in the game are a bit plastic.

The whole game seemed plastic to me, but then again, it was the overabundance of "useless material", or whatnot, in the original DX that made the world come alive. The storyline even seemed pretty good considering the state of the world after what JC did in the first game.

Like I said, I'm at 20. I guess that sums up my feelings. I was a bit worried at the beginning, but the gameplay kicked in and I've really liked it. I wouldn't blame someone for not liking it. The 'choices' in the game are a bit plastic. But I dumbed myself down a little bit. They are taking chances a lot of developers won't take. Once I lowered my expectations, the goodness of it came alive. It's a matter of taste. Not everyone will like the same thing.

Including all the level loads I beat the game in just a whisper over 10 hours, and that was on Realistic. I guess that sums up my dissapointment in the game, eh? Even TrueCrime, the easiest GTA like game i've played took about twice that ammount of time. So small, so small.

"Is it just me, or does the model of the scientist from 2 years ago, running on a 2002 cpu and graphics card look a lot better than any models in the game today? And the game seems to be running at a pretty good clip."

I've been playing the game throughout the last week. That looks like the same model I've seen about 200 hundred times so far... I wouldn't say it looks any better. But, I definitely admit that it is a bit strange that it does appear to be running very well, with all the shadowing included. It runs pretty well on my supermachine, but it really doesn't make sense how so many other people have had problems considering it had good performance way back then. Well... they must have added some features to the lighting system I guess.

[my version of ray] Wondering how reviewers said this is a 10 to 15 hour game when I'm probably at about 20 hours and counting.

Edit: can't spell.
This comment was edited on Feb 28, 23:57.

What videos? I followed this game like a hawk and don't remember any videos coming out around E3 of last year

I couldn't find any still on the web from E3 2003, but there is a video from E3 2002 available here:

http://www.itavisen.no/art/1298808.html

Is it just me, or does the model of the scientist from 2 years ago, running on a 2002 cpu and graphics card look a lot better than any models in the game today? And the game seems to be running at a pretty good clip.

WARNING: those of you who hate the final HUD will likely experience severe nausea while viewing this movie

This comment was edited on Feb 28, 16:53.

It truly amazes me how many people in this thread are trying to justify what are obviously very skewed reviews that we regularly see for games that turn out to suck. All you have to do is look at the majority of reviews for EA titles that GameSpot does to see the bias. Yet people are trying to act as if there's a fair reason for it. That's like saying that Fox News' or CNN's strong bias towards the Bush administration is justified because "Well, he is in power and all you know." Journalists are supposed to be fair and objective, that's the whole point. Maybe if a bunch of these gaming magazines and web sites would stand up to the publishers and go "You know, if you cut out all your advertising from all our publications, your game won't sell.", the publishers would stop strong-arming them. The reason publishers get away with releasing incomplete crap like DX:IW is because a lot of people buy them based on the reviews and then put up with waiting for patch after patch after patch which never actually fixes the main problem. If people want quality products, then they have to demand it instead of just going "EA sucks! Now where's my next Sims expansion?"

Parallax Abstraction

More on with #69's thing, C&C Generals was such a disappointment compared to the videos/screenies I saw of it. Hl2 videos/screenies compared to the alpha(of course I expect it to be better in the final). Theres very few that manage to go beyond what you see in the videos/screenies nowadays. Only one that comes to my mind is probably Far Cry. Cheers!

"This my finest sword. If in your journey you should encounter God, God will be cut." -Hattori Hanzo ~Kill Bill

But you have to admit the screenshots had more detail, and higher resolution textures.

Oh yeah your not getting any argument from me in that respect. Some of the screenshots from a year and a half to two years ago look radically different and better from what was actually released. Games usually don't look as good as some of the prerelease screenshots though (anyone else remember that early vid of the flamethrower trooper for RTCW?). Still I wouldn't have expected such a radically different looking game. Overall I liked the look of IW but the finished product definately wasn't as stunning as the early screenshots.

It's been a while since we had a good long Invisible War thread.

anyone seen the cigarette ads in dx2?

Holy Smokes...they're saviorific!

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